All change!

Reading through the changes to the Sellaband concept has left me with very mixed feelings. In many respects I'm actually extremely pleased they've finally taken the action they have, but by the same token I now see only a make-or-break option with no obvious alternative routes for the progress of the site.

The change to only 1CD per believer may seem like a relatively small thing once you get past the legitimate reasons such as artists investing in themselves and people wanting more than one copy for friends/relatives, but I think for the average believer it should now make you stop and ask the following 2 questions - Why did I join Sellaband? and What do I expect now the new terms have been revealed?

When I originally joined Sellaband, with the exception of Nemesea I was quite a small believer. Like several other believers, I actually became a "big believer" (or at least a bigger believer than originally intended) most particularly after Sellaband raised the idea of believer shops. Many may see me as a "big believer" but I'm really a music lover who turned into one, because of the way I viewed Sellaband at the time. Was it really so naive to think that so few CDs would sell via Sellaband? After all, we're talking a company here with contacts in the music industry already. Like many others I thought those contacts would be able to have some impact, because I do genuinely believe there are 5000 homes for the CDs of any artist out there and they can be found eventually. After all, how many people are there in the world with an Internet connection who listen to music? 5000 is the merest fraction of a percent! And when it comes to contacts, you also get the ideas of marketing and promotion in mind - the contacts ought to exist not only to make the CD but also to give some guidance to help it to sell too!

But I think that Sellaband has stated its position very clearly with the new terms and has basically stated that it does not want to be the revolution in the music industry, but rather wants to be a small cog which may or may not turn out to form part of that revolution in the future.

Sometimes I despair, because when it comes to "music 2.0" nobody seems to have figured out that being just part of the equation isn't enough if you truly want to start a revolution in music. The first company to figure out how to help an artist get fans, book gigs, record their music, manage their money, deal with promotion and generally stop them going insane in the process is going to be onto a winner. It's fine to say that in the "new music world" artists are now in control of their own destiny, but when you consider all that's involved in terms of finding and keeping an audience on top of them actually having the creativity to make music in the first place, "non omnia possumus omnes" surely has never applied more strongly than to the artists themselves. And sure, a company can take that "we can't do everything" approach as well, but having the options all in one place is surely going to be a winner over having to go everywhere for all the tools you might need. Some artists may be good at self-promotion. Some may know one of the guys who works at the local recording studio. The reality is, most don't know what they're doing - they just have a dream to make music. So the person who can come along and fill in the gaps so making music is all they have to think about is always going to be in demand.

From my point of view, therefore, Sellaband has stated that they are merely a tool where you can turn up, raise 50K and record an album. Don't expect anything outside of that, because I haven't seen it anywhere in the "new era" concept changes. Don't expect them to find your fans and don't expect them to promote your music (despite this maybe being quite a weird concept to get your head around as they're taking publishing revenue). Maybe if their top-secret partnership to be revealed on 1st December is someone like Topspin I may change my mind, but I see the future as a combination of 1 part believers, "fanatics" who really get hooked on an act and a few of the super-rich who are just spending their pocket money (yes we have a few believers on Sellaband who own companies, their own aeroplanes etc. etc.).

Look at it this way - if 50K artists aren't selling a large number of normal copies of CDs or digital mp3s now through Sellaband and its third party links, what makes you think 50K artists will be able to sell copies in future? With Sellaband saying it wants no real part of promotion (but hey you're free to use the 5K from your budget for that if you want it) and there being no additional copies of CDs for buying more than one part, I see no obvious reason to buy more than one part in an artist in future, unless one of the as-yet-unknown incentives is deemed to have sufficient value to you as a believer to make you want to spend the extra. (hence the "fanatic"). Artists are going to have to prove they can already effectively promote themselves through channels other than Sellaband in future and bring people in via that or I can't see how they will stand a chance of raising 50K until Sellaband has an awful lot more real believers on board.

I think it should therefore be obvious from the above what my own strategy will be in future. I will be buying one part in artists I like (probably fairly early to reserve that low-numbered CD) and only decide much closer to the 50K whether I want to go for an incentive, based on how much I like the act, or whether they've actually done anything to convince me they're worth spending extra cash on. I figure questions such as "Have you got a manager?", "Who is your promotion company?" and other similar nuggets may be on others minds before they part with a lot of cash under the new rules. On the upside, if a lot of people start looking at incentives then we could actually get some faster runs to 50K than we've seen of late as people snap them up. The bar has really been raised for new artists - if you can't bring a heap of people with you I'd now be inclined to say forget it until Sellaband actually has that 100,000 new believers on board (assuming it can get them)

For my existing multiple-part acts the future is unclear, but I am in no immediate rush since the 1 year extension plan on CDs announced. I figure that I've got until an artist gets close to 50K or the 1 year deadline is up before I decide anything. If I'm still on a heap of parts and an artist hasn't moved significantly forward in that year the incentives (including any I've received to date) will decide what I do, and I think that's fair given the amount of time. Likewise, if an artist looks like hitting 50K and I'm not sure I'll be able to sell all the CDs myself then I'll be having a chat with the artist in question and seeing what we can work out, but I think there will be very few of those.

New believers therefore become the crunch point. Without some "big names" arriving and bringing believers with them, Sellaband is pretty much going to have to provide these believers themselves. I can only hope for their sakes that they are sitting on something really big, because the early part of 2009 and the number of new believers it brings is going to mean the difference between artists stagnating and new artists being able to make progress as well as artists already on Sellaband trying to make the rush before the Dec 1st deadline. Will Sellaband still exist in 2010? I guess we'll have to wait and find out.

P.S. As you can probably realise my change in strategy means there will be a few changes concerning my "hatchet day" blog but you'll have to wait until the 1st December to find out what the future of "hatchet day" looks like.